In a garden, a woman is writing a storybook whilst her daughter talks at her incessantly. After spotting a crow in a tree, the girl asks her mother to tell her the story about ‘The Man’ as it had crows in it. The Mother begins her story:
There was nothing at the end of the garden. That is to say there was nothing but the oak tree and the patch of nettles and the ash dump, and all of these were nothing to Clara. Until one morning quite near to the end of the holidays when she met ‘The Little Man’. He was leaning against a toadstool dabbing at his face with a pocket handkerchief and was in a state of considerable agitation. He looked up and fixed a pair of sharp green eyes on Clara.
“Vinegar!” He exclaimed. “Camphor, bicarbonate of soda. Do you have such things? Your larder perhaps?”
Clara thought The Little Man exceedingly rude.
“Excuse me sir!” She said in a voice she heard in a voice she heard Cook use when talking to the coalman. “Might I ask your name?”
“That, Little Girl, is something I’m not prepared to reveal.”
At the Red Tavern, Jago and Litefoot are dramatically reading through a script, much to the bemusement of Leela and Ellie. Leela’s time-compass suddenly detects what she describes as an energy source and she steps outside to investigate it. Sergeant Quick arrives and explains that he has been investigating the strangest spate of smash and grab robberies, the only things stolen were household condiments and all the crimes took place on a single street in Brixton. His only witness so far is the authoress Eleanor Naismith, which excites Jago as he recognises that she is a popular children’s fantasy author and yearns to perform her stories at the Theatre. Leela’s time-compass suddenly begins to increase in sound as it begins to triangulate the energy source as originating in Brixton…
“I can see that you’re lonely” said the Little Man. “I can see it at the corners of your mouth.”
“My Mother is dead, but it couldn’t be helped. My Father is in India, I believe that’s abroad. But I have Cook and Miserrimus the cat. I’m sure you would like him, or perhaps you wouldn’t. He might eat you. You a little bigger than a rat.”
“I should like to strike a bargain with you, Child” He said cleaning his lunettes with a shirt cuff.
“What kind of bargain?” asked Clara.
“Help me acquire those small things that I need and I will ensure that you are never lonely again. Not for as long as you live!”
Clara looked at the ground and frowned to give the impression of being in a brown study.
“Very well” she said at last without quite knowing why.
Jago arrives at the Naismith household and is unwelcomely greeted by the housekeeper, Mrs. Hitch. Jago asks for an audience with Mrs. Naismith, but Hitch tries to turn him away. Suddenly, a loud scream cries out from within the house. Hitch excuses herself and rushes upstairs with Jago following close behind. They both hear a struggle coming from within Naismith’s study. Jago manages to break the locked door off it’s hinges and both discover the room to be completely empty and incredibly dark thanks to the windows being locked by shutters. They hear Naismith’s daughter Clara crying inside a locked box and free her.
“I watched you walking in the garden Clara. I heard you talking to the Jackdaws in the oak tree. I saw you sitting by the flowerbeds and writing in that little book and I knew then that you were a lonely little girl.”
“And how pray do you know my name?” demanded Clara blushing with annoyance.
“You have it written on the front of your pocketbook. There it is in black and white.”
Litefoot and Quick investigate Naismith’s study. Quick finds that the gaslights are not working as someone has clogged the pipes with raisins and the shutters inoperable, meaning they must work in the dark. They deduce that the shutters in the room are new due to the sawdust shavings on the floor and the box in which Clara was found has breathing holes to contain a living thing. Litefoot deduces that Eleanor entered the room and placed Clara in the box, but neglected to lock it before closing the shutters, so she tried to turn on the gaslight which failed to operate due to the raisins in the pipes. At this point, Naismith’s assailant revealed himself and the two struggled in the darkness. Litefoot assumes that there could be a secret passage or a hidden door in the room that she could have disappeared to. Quick leaves to investigate the garden and Litefoot finds the chaise lounge covered in blood and he finds a ridiculously small pair of shoes…
Jago interviews Hitch and Clara. Clara fails to recall any details of what happened prior to being locked into a box. She is more preoccupied with what Quick is doing in the garden. Litefoot arrives and produces the tiny shoes. Clara does not recognise the shoes, but she points out something rather concerning…Quick is lying face down in her garden…
Litefoot rushes out to help Quick back to his feet. Quick explains that a magpie flew down at him and bit at his ear, causing him to lose a bit of blood. As Litefoot helps Quick back to the house, Quick explains that the garden’s ash dump has signs of someone digging through it and plans to get a forensics team to investigate. Jago looks up at the tree and points out that several jackdaws are looking down at them very silently and still…
Leela is wandering the streets of London trying to pinpoint the energy source her time-compass picked up. She manages to focus it and the voices of The Little Girl and The Mother become audible through the device. She sets off to the Naismith household.
The Little Girl asks her mother when the crows enter the story, but her mother restrains her enthusiasm and continues the story:
Clara pushed open the kitchen door. All was quiet save for the odd crackle from the range. She pressed a finger to her lips and the Little Man slipped out of his tiny red shoes knowing that the hard heels would tap on the flagstone floor.
“I have a list” said the Little Man fumbling at his waistcoat pocket. “Here it is! Ah yes! Bicarbonate of soda, safety matches, mothballs, a patty pan, mushroom ketchup. Would these be present here?”
Clara fetched the soda and the ketchup bottle from the larder. She rummaged in a drawer and produced a handful of mothballs and a box of swans lucifers.
“And a patty pan?” He implored “It must be a patty pan. The funnel you know, quite essential.”
Clara lifted the patty pan from the range.
“And does anyone in this household suffer from sleeplessness?”
“No” answered Clara. And then a thought struck her. She clambered upon the Windsor chair and reached up to the medicine cabinet. There at the back was a dusty bottle of Mother Godfrey’s quieting syrup.
“Perfect” said the Little Man “A mild opiate I presume?”
“Oh no” said Clara “Just a sleeping draft. Something to stop a baby crying through the night.”
Just then, there came the sound of a low cough quite close and the unmistakable sound of Cook’s ankles cracking as she made her slow way across the hall. I think that Clara and the Little Man would have been discovered had Cook not been quite so deaf and the Little Man had not at that moment transformed himself into a perfect likeness of a bag of tapioca.
Hitch is putting Clara to bed and is taking extra precautions to make sure she is safe, such as locking the windows and the bedroom door. She asks Clara if she told Jago about him? To which Clara denies. Clara asks if her mother will ever come back. To reassure her, Hitch recalls a day the family went on a picnic with a family called the Messiters and their dog. The dog went missing all day, but by the time they were about to leave, the dog showed up safe and sound. Just as Hitch is about to leave, she and Clara hear the doorbell ring. Hitch leaves to answer it, while Clara hopes that it is her missing mother at the door. Once Hitch leaves the room, Clara picks up her storybook and starts to read until she falls asleep.
Into the patty pan they went, all the items smuggled from the pantry and tool shed. Together with a thin grey dust that the Little Man added from the twist of paper secreted in the pocket of his moleskin trousers. The mixture sputtered in the dish. Taking Cook’s pastry brush, he painted the liquor over the pages of Clara’s pocketbook. The leaves fizzed gently.
“With this, you may have anything you desire, my dear! Except riches and you must not use it to harm me! Write against your benefactor and the book will strike you dead!”
This said, the Little Man took Clara by the hand and led her down to the end of the garden.
Litefoot answers the door to find a telegram for Quick, who has returned home after his injury. The telegram has confirmed that the Police have begun circulating an all points bulletin for Mrs. Naismith. Litefoot believes that there could be a familial connection and wonders about the whereabouts of Mr. Naismith. Jago explains that Mr. Naismith had died not long after marrying Eleanor from drowning after falling from a ferry. The Infernal Investigators do not rule out the possibility of him still being alive as Jago confirms that no body was discovered. Hitch arrives after settling Clara to bed and Litefoot questions her about the Naismith family. But Hitch tells them that Naismith kept her family business to herself. Jago suddenly spots a faint light coming from the garden. Hitch begins to panic stating that it is Him. Hitch is frozen with horror and cannot bring herself to identify the intruder. Litefoot decides to investigate for himself, and leaves armed with a revolver.
The Little Man led Clara to the end of the lawn.
“I have come such a very long way” he said, “And if I am to return home, I must rest.”
A sudden thought struck Clara.
“Home to the Moon you mean?” she exclaimed.
“Quite so” said the Little Man “I will rest here for a year and a day. I will sleep in the warmth of the ash dump, and you must wake me when the time comes.”
“And how will I do that?” asked Clara.
“By speaking my name,” said the Little Man.
Clara scented, but the Little Man fixed her with a look of implacable seriousness and crooked one of his tiny cold hands against her face.
“Think carefully before you agree” he said “For if you fail to keep your part of the bargain. If you do not wake me at the agreed time. I will take the thing that you love the best."
He whispered his true name into Clara’s ear.
In the garden, Litefoot slowly approaches the intruder with his revolver. He discovers the intruder is Leela holding onto her time-compass. The time-compass is replaying garbled excerpts from Naismith’s book. Leela assumes that the book’s excerpts have been blocking her from finding the time break her time-compass is tracking.
Meanwhile, Jago is talking to Hitch. She tells Jago she has been in servitude to Eleanor Naismith ever since she was a girl. Jago asks about whether she believes in the stories Eleanor writes as he notes that Hitch became rather agitated when she saw the light in the garden. Suddenly, the jackdaws begin crashing headfirst into the windows and the garden door bursts open as Litefoot and Leela rush through trying to protect themselves from the rabid birds pecking at them. Leela notes that despite the unusual behaviour of the jackdaws, Hitch is not the least disturbed by them. The birds fly upwards towards the house’s top floor and a child’s scream cries out. The jackdaws are trying to invade Clara’s bedroom. Hitch is reluctant to act, but Leela snatches the bedroom key from her and orders Jago to follow.
The Little Girl asks her mother if Cook is a bad person and why Clara did not awaken the Little Man, but her mother tells her she is getting ahead of herself and she continues the story:
Clara watched the Little Man settle into the dust of the ash dump as if he were luxuriating in a deep bath. As he disappeared, he gave her a cheerful wave.
“Write something in the pocketbook!” he called “As long as it’s not about me!” And he vanished beneath a tide of dust and old oyster shells and broken china. Clara sat on the grass and began to write. Sitting in a branch above was a sleek, black jackdaw. She wrote thus:
‘The sleek, black jackdaw contemplated the day. He was uncommonly hungry’.
Clara dropped the pocketbook in surprise. There, spreading through the air like an ink stain creeping through blotting paper was a jackdaw just as she had described. A perfect twin of the bird perched in the tree. But his brother on the grass had a look in his eye. A look, Clara recognised, of uncommon hunger. So she wrote thus:
‘There was a plate of tarts on the grass. They were cooling in the afternoon air’.
And there they were! Bright as an illustration in a Christmas annual. As the jackdaw reached out to take one however, a shadow fell across the lawn. The shadow of Cook.
“Tarts, is it?” said Cook “We’ll see about that!”
Clara struggles in vain to open the door as the jackdaws vigorously bash against the bolted windows. Leela manages to open the door just in time as the jackdaws smash their way through the windows. She ushers Clara and Jago out and slams the door shut before the jackdaws can attack them. Jago tries to calm a panic-wrought Clara, but Leela realises that she is the girl in the book. Clara explains that the Clara in the book is her mother when she was a child. Leela thinks back to what the Little Man had said. If Eleanor was the one the Little Man had contact with, then it would most likely want to take Clara away as she is the most important thing in her life. Jago and Leela barricade the door while Litefoot starts a fire in the fireplace to keep the birds from coming down the chimney.
Downstairs, Litefoot is surprised to find that a huge swarm of Jackdaws are now encircling the house, trapping them all inside. As Litefoot prepares the fireplace, he demands that Hitch tells him everything she knows. Hitch explains she was the reason that Eleanor broke her promise to the Little Man when she was a child. More disturbingly, she is certain the Clara Jago and Leela rescued is not the real Clara. She explains that she had been tricked before by the Little Man, so when she told Clara about the day out with the Messiters, the story was a fake one as they know no such family, which means the Clara upstairs is not the real Clara…
Upstairs, Clara explains that Eleanor had her locked in a strongbox with airholes to protect her from the Little Man when he struck again. Jago explains the study’s defences to Leela, so she designates it the room where they shall defend themselves.
In the candlelit study, the Infernal Investigators, Leela, Hitch and Clara gather to hold off the Little Man’s jackdaw armada. Litefoot remembers the room had a suit of armour and explains that someone could don the armour and leave the house whilst withstanding the birds to get help. Leela elects Hitch to leave as she is suspicious of her lack of fear, but Hitch tells her that she is deathly afraid and Leela deduces that it is not the birds she fears, its something else. Hitch notices that Clara is holding onto a particular pocketbook. Hitch realises that it is the very book that is causing all the supernatural events – The Man at the End of the Garden. Hitch explains that she confiscated the book from a young Eleanor when she was a child. Years later, Mr. Naismith had died, and the family became destitute. Hitch eventually realised the powers of the book and used it to help the family gain whatever they wanted without them realising. Leela flitters through the book and realises that over time, young Eleanor grew up to believe that the Little Man was just a figment of her imagination and thus forgot to awaken him as promised, instead she wrote a story about this encounter and had it published, inadvertently going against the rule of using the book for financial gain. Only recently had Naismith realised Hitch’s deception and in her rage, she invoked the name of the Little Man, who awakened years later in the family ash dump with vengeance on his mind and determined to take what Eleanor loved the most – Clara. To prepare for the Little Man’s retribution, Eleanor fortified the study and locked Clara inside a box to protect her. Jago looks at the box Clara was hiding inside and realises it to be a conjurer’s magic box. He pulls a second lever and inside the group finds…a second Clara. The second Clara looks at the other ‘Clara’ and tells her that she has written the final page of the story and tells her to stop pretending. The ‘Clara’ standing in the room starts to shapeshift into the form of a hideous gremlin-like creature and angrily tells Clara that her mother broke her promise. Before the Little Man can do anything, Leela holds the creature at knifepoint.
The Little Man stamped his feet. He raged and raged at Clara, but she stood firm against him.
“Take your wretched book!” she said “Take it and begone! You are a wicked little man, and I shall not go with you! The crows and the jackdaws are my friends! You gave them to me and now I give them back to you!”
Clara explains that Eleanor locked her away with one thing to protect her, the final page of her pocketbook with which to finish the story. The Little Man callously reveals that during his struggle with Eleanor, she was trying to write something in the pocketbook. Hitch discovers Eleanor wrote something that would protect herself from the Little Man in barely legible handwriting – ‘Let me stay in the dark until my daughter calls me back’. Clara realises that Eleanor was hiding in the room all along, hence why the room was dark. She calls out to her and Jago shines a candle in the corner of the room to reveal…Eleanor alive and well. Clara explains that she wanted to wish Eleanor back sooner, but it was too dark to write. But when Litefoot and Hitch entered the room earlier with lit candles, she took advantage of the light to finish the story. She hands Eleanor her final page and asks her to read it:
The Little Girl seemed helpless. The house was besieged. Darkness had fallen, but then she remembered who brought the flock of birds into the world and that nothing in nature betrays its own mother and she knew the secret that no one had dared to tell in the ten years of her life…that she was not born like other little girls. That she had sprung from the pages of a book, written up into life to keep her mother’s heart from breaking by a kind old servant who knew how lonely her mother really was and who heard her sobbing in the night.
Eleanor explains to the vicious Little Man that Clara wrote these and as a creation of the pocketbook cannot be bound by the terms of their bargain, much to the Little Man’s aggravation.
So she raised her hand and commanded her knight in shining armour to open the door.
With this instruction, Jago helps Litefoot to quickly suit up in the armour in the room and he opens the door to the study to let the jackdaws in. The Little Man begs them not to do so, but the jackdaws fly in and swarm him.
The birds filled the air of the little room. The four strongest of the jackdaws swooped upon the shoulders of the Little Man and lifted him up into the air. High, high he went. Over the tree, over the ash dump, over the garden wall. Higher and higher until he reached that region of the sky from which he had descended. The birds did not slack in their grip until they had reached the deserts of the Moon. The Little Man settled himself in the silver ashes that covers the surface of the lunar world and watched the birds fly off into the heavens. All save one and that last jackdaw perched on the Little Man’s shoulder and said: “Here is my promise, Little Man. You need not fear loneliness never again”.
With the danger passed, Jago, Litefoot and Leela are having tea with the Naismith family. Leela’s time-compass is still acting erratic. Hitch tells the Infernal Investigators that the Naismiths have gone to the ash dump in the garden with the pocketbook and some matches…
In the garden, Clara fears what will happen to her when the book is destroyed as she came from it. But Naismith reassures her that she belongs to her and Hitch and that will never change. Naismith lights a match, and the book slowly burns away.
The Little Girl, now revealed to be Clara’s granddaughter of several generations, asks why the version of the story told to her differs in ending to the published version. Her mother explains that when her grandmother of several generations wrote the story, she did not have an ending in mind, but eventually she did and kept the ‘true ending’ within the family to pass down to future generations as a warning should the Little Man ever return…
At the Red Tavern, the Infernal Investigators are relaying the results of the case to Sergeant Quick, who is sporting a nasty scar on his ear after his altercation with the jackdaw. Leela’s time-compass begins to stabilize, and she rushes out to investigate the source with Jago and Litefoot following closely. Leela becomes more concerned as the compass begins to register the biggest time break yet. The trio trace the source to…The New Regency Theatre…
